I was looking through my bookshelves and thought about how many of the books I read are about women. One that stood out to me was Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen. It was part of Oprah’s Book Club in1998.
It is the story of a woman named Fran Benedetto who married her husband Bobby when she was young and madly in love. She worked as a nurse and Bobby works as a police officer. They have a ten-year old son together. They lead a seemingly normal life that covers the physical abuse that she has suffered from her husband for most of their marriage and her fear of what will happen if she leaves him. It describes the changes from loving passion to quick violence and the hope that something will change.
A woman comes to speak at Fran’s hospital about abused women and ways for medical professionals to identify them. She eventually uses this contact as a way to catapault herself into a new life, with a new name, in a new place. Her son works to adjust to a new school and new friends without her father and Fran keeps breathing every day trying to make it from one to the next. She lives with the daily fear that they will be found.
This was a book that once I started, I could hardly put down. She did a good job of developing all of the characters and story lines. I could clearly understand how Fran, her son and even her ex-husband were feeling at different points in the story. This was a wonderful book.
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